- This event has passed.
Talk | ‘Print, Plastic, Panorama: The Empress of Britain Fashion Story, 1956‘
November 25, 2020 @ 16:00 - 17:00
‘Print, Plastic, Panorama: The Empress of Britain Fashion Story, 1956‘
Professor Faye Hammill (University of Glasgow)
Time: 16.00 (GMT)
Date: Weds, 25 November 2020.
Duration: 60 mins (30 min talk, 30 min Q&A)
Venue: Microsoft Teams
How to Join: Email ppcrg@ntu.ac.uk to request a joining link.
The Periodicals and Print Culture Research Group (PPCRG) is delighted to welcome Professor Faye Hammill (University of Glasgow) as the first speaker in our 2020-21 New Directions Series.
Our New Directions series of invited guest speakers for 2020-21 will focus on exchanging and developing methodologies across disciplines in periodicals and print cultural research. Hosted online, this occasional series of talks is open to all.
For this first talk in the series, Faye will discuss print mobilities on ocean liners and plastic in print as a method for interpreting the relationship between domesticity and mobility in mid-twentieth century magazines.
Overview
The Canadian Home Journal was a successful women’s monthly published from 1905 until 1958. As the title suggests, its content was domestic in two senses: the focus was on home and nation. Yet the magazine consistently engaged with themes of mobility. During the final decade of its run, the jet age had arrived, but the age of the ocean liner was not yet past. Car ownership was on the increase, though railway trips were still heavily promoted. These forms of transport compete for attention in the pages of the Journal. This talk presents a case study of the May 1956 issue, which documents a fashion event set on Canadian Pacific’s new transatlantic liner. “The Empress of Britain Fashion Story” is about design and commerce, glamour and novelty – and above all, it is about plastic. From synthetic fibres to camera film, from cellophane wrapping to laminated panels, plastics feature on almost every page of the issue. Presented as the ultimate domestic product, plastic is simultaneously used to evoke panoramas of travel. This talk explores plastic in print, as a way to understand the larger dynamic between home and mobility in mid-century magazine culture.
About the Speaker
Faye Hammill is a Professor in the School of Critical Studies at Glasgow University. She works on early and mid-twentieth century literature and print culture in a transatlantic frame. Faye is the author of six books, most recently Modernism’s Print Cultures, with Mark Hussey (2016) and Magazines, Travel and Middlebrow Culture, with Michelle Smith (2015). In 2008, she set up the AHRC Middlebrow Network, which now has over 400 members. Her current project is on ‘Ocean Liners and Modern Literature’.